Flower in the River: A Family Tale Finally Told

Creative Defiance: Dodging Doubters, Ditching Clowns

• Natalie Zett

Share episode

Send us a text

Welcome to Episode 29 of Flower in the River Podcast! 

What's Cooking Today?

  • A poetic toast to the 100th anniversary of Jun Fujita's "Tanka: Poems in Exile." 
  • Your guide to sniffing out good advice from bad in the Writing & Genealogy Tips corner. 
  • Meet Elly DeAngelo, a character from Flower in the River who was stitched together from some amazing real-life muses. 
  • A rally cry for creative defiance!

 Episode Highlights  

Tribute to Jun Fujita's poetry

  • We're kicking things off with a heartfelt nod to the poetic masterpiece, "Tanka: Poems in Exile." A century old and still fresh as a daisy!

Wisdom Alert: Tips & Tricks

  • Ever been slammed with brutal critique? Hear about a former student's close call and how to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to criticism.

Who the Heck is Elly DeAngelo?

  • Buckle up as we deep-dive into this captivating character.

The Art of Creative Rebellion

  •  We wrap up with a chat about why defiance is your best friend when faced with discouragement.

 Final Thoughts

  • Remember, we're all born creators. It's just a matter of letting that creativity shine.

Links

Music by  idokay (Artlist)

  • Cicada Killer.
  • The Colors Began to Fade


Natalie Zett:

Welcome to episode 29 of Flower in the River podcast, and this week I do have some news. So a few episodes ago, if you recall, I interviewed Graham Harrison Lee, who is the great nephew of June Fujita. June Fujita is the photographer of the Eastland disaster the photographer, but June was a whole lot more than just a photographer. He was the quintessential Renaissance man and for the 100th anniversary of the publication of his book of poems the book is called Tanka Poems and Exile Graham put together this interesting and beautiful multimedia tribute to this book of poetry by June Fujita, and I was one of the many voices who was asked to participate in this project and talk about a huge honor. It was really wonderful to be able to do this. Graham has released a video and I will put a link to that in the show notes, and if you're scratching your head right now wondering what Tanka is, that's T-A-N-K-A.

Natalie Zett:

Tonka is a form of Japanese poetry that's similar to haiku, but not quite haiku. I really don't know how else to describe it. Somebody described it as haiku's sophisticated relative, but I really don't know. The most fascinating thing about this book of poetry is the sparseness. Seriously, I thought I could read probably the whole book in 30 minutes, but that's not true. There's very few words that are chosen, but the words that are chosen are so powerful. It's one thing to sit and read this book and it's an entirely different emotional, evocative experience to read those sparse words aloud. It takes on a whole new power, and I really don't have the vocabulary to describe what this was like, but it actually felt like a doorway had opened into a very magical realm, and it was a realm that I wished I could have stayed at longer. It's really incredible.

Natalie Zett:

So, as I've shared previously, I've started to include writer's tips or genealogy tips in each episode before I get into the book, and this is an article that I have been working on for quite a while the reason for that is, there's a recurring theme that keeps appearing in my life and in the lives of my colleagues and friends and even family, and my tentative title for this little article is Critics and Clowns, the Unsung Heroes and the Invisible Foes of the Creative Journey. Isn't that lofty? Well, we'll see where that goes. Speaking of lofty, or rather the loft literary center in Minneapolis, one of my former students, who was with me a number of years ago, contacted me a couple of weeks ago and asked with anyone who puts their creative work out into the world, out into the universe? She got some awful criticism thrown at her. That was more a case of an ad hominem attack. And what does that mean? It means that it's an attack on a person and it's not the constructive criticism for the work that they have done. Well, the good thing about this is that I was glad she reached out to me so I could give her honest feedback, constructive feedback, and the article she wrote was actually fine. I didn't see any problem with it, and this is my way, I guess, of paying it forward.

Natalie Zett:

Everyone that I know, whether they are musicians, whether they are authors, whether they are actors, artists, etc. At some point during their creative career, they will get feedback that's mean-spirited and it seems to be an attack against them, as opposed to the constructive criticism that I think all of us want to have, and it just helps keep us going and moving forward, sometimes to have a person who we can trust, and here's the advice that I have often been given during my various creative endeavors. People have said, hey, you have to develop a thick skin, and I'm not sure the telling people that they need to get a thick skin is all that useful. Maybe it is some of the time. So my advice to this former student was to consider the source, and if this feedback is helpful and it causes you to grow and re-examine yourself, that's good. It might hurt for a little bit, but that's a good thing, and eventually you do learn from that experience. However, if the intent seems to shame you or stop you, that is something that's entirely different and something that you should perhaps examine and try to determine.

Natalie Zett:

Where is this really coming from? And I don't know if there's just something in the air, but she's not the only person who's reached out to me in the last year and a half or so to talk about this type of thing that's been happening to her. Perhaps it's because I have a book, and maybe she thinks I understand a little bit more about that experience and have figured out what to do about that or how to live with that. Maybe that's the reason, but here's the thing I don't have any answers either. The one thing I do rely on, though, are those trusted confidants, fellow artists and explorers and learners, to support me in my own journey, and I try to do the same for them, and I think of all the things, all the creations that have been stopped in their tracks because of the so-called feedback of these types of people who want to stop it and destroy it. They're always going to be there, and I have no solution for this. No one does. They will not go away.

Natalie Zett:

But back to the advice about developing a thick skin. It just doesn't work for many of us, because a lot of us are pretty sensitive and we want to stay that way. We don't want to develop a shell, an armor that doesn't let anything in either. So I would always suggest finding a community of people, and that can be physical or virtual, and this group can be just you and another person, and whatever the group ends up being. It's important to have people you can talk to, who understand the types of challenges you're going through as you try to create whatever you're creating, and the biggest prerequisite is to have people who are also engaged in their own work, and they're working alongside of you, they're journeying alongside of you, and that's one of the things that I have been thinking about is it's one of those lifetime. I don't want to call it a crusade, but I'll call it that just because it's early and I can't think of another word, but it's a crusade and so I want everyone who wants to get their work out there to get their work out there, and right now there is no better time to do this.

Natalie Zett:

But in the world of artistry, storytelling and public performance, two figures often lurk in the background the critic and the clown, and at first these two characters might appear as two sides of the same coin, both offering feedback to those brave enough to step into the spotlight, into the public arena. However, their roles in the creative journey couldn't be more different. Back in the late 80s, several friends and I had a great idea. We founded a theater company and we were pretty young and fresh and new and we had all kinds of ideas of what we wanted to accomplish with this thing and we were called the Magic Circle Ensemble. The late great William Randall Beard was our artistic director and we had free license to experiment with all kinds of forms of performance. We were an ensemble, a true ensemble, and a lot of times we used to joke about ourselves and call ourselves one big, happy, dysfunctional family. And for those years we really were like a family. We traveled together, we worked together, we fought together, we ate together, we did a lot of stuff together and we created a lot of original work out of our ensemble life.

Natalie Zett:

A lot of times we were performing in church basements and the church kitchen was our dressing room. We performed outside, we performed in broken down buildings, we performed at old radio stations. It was fun and, given the era, it was back in the day where there was no social media and that was definitely a mixed blessing. So we were free to experiment and free to see what worked. We did a lot of what's called staged readings, and staged readings are well, at least the way we did them. We would get a big table and have a bunch of scripts and read them. There was no staging or anything like that. It was more about hearing the performance, watching the actors interact with each other and getting feedback from one another, as well as our audience, as to what's working and what wasn't. And if the playwright was there they could take notes and, you know, maybe improve or change their scripts.

Natalie Zett:

And in terms of our regular performances, the ones that were on various stages, we always hoped that we could garner enough attention to be reviewed by one of the local critics and I should clarify when I'm saying critics in this context, it's like the bona fide critics of old who were very well schooled in theater and well respected in our area. We definitely wanted them to see our shows and to give us some kind of review and feedback. So at one point during one of our performances we didn't know this, but one of these very well known critics was in the audience. This guy was somebody to be feared. He could either make or break a career or theater company, et cetera. So we did a night of one act shows maybe there were about four or five of them. Most of them were original works and one of those works was one of my plays.

Natalie Zett:

So this critic is in the audience and maybe in the next day or two after he reviewed us and he basically took us to the woodshed. He had all kinds of things to critique about our choices, our performances and so on and so on, and of course it angered and hurt us very much. And, as he did with other actors, he singled out each person's performance and when the time came to talk about my performance, what he said was Natalie Zett had her moments. So I guess that was about as good as it was going to get. And that was another one of those unintended life lessons that throughout life you may have your moments or you will have your moments. But when my fellow actors and I settled down and calmed down, we took a look at what this guy said about us and we thought, hey, he's right. There were certain things that we needed to change in terms of our sets, in terms of casting choices, and we needed to make a few tweaks that he suggested, because those tweaks could make our shows better. And as tough as it was getting that kind of feedback his feedback once we assessed it and applied the changes that he suggested, the ones that made sense for us, it improved everything for us. I don't think he ever reviewed any of our shows after that.

Natalie Zett:

However, this is the kind of person that, if you find them, you are fortunate. The thing is, it doesn't feel like it at the time, but eventually it really yields quite a bit for you in terms of moving forward. So this guy is what I would call the thoughtful critic and, contrary to what many people say, this type of critic is not the enemy of creativity, but is its unsung hero. This individual provides thoughtful analysis that we all need if we want to grow. They definitely are the embodiment of Theodore Roosevelt's man in the arena, as popularized by Brene Brown. They're willing to engage with the creative work and give you feedback that promotes growth. Now, this critic leaves you with something tangible, an insight or a recommendation that will make things better. As has been said, the truth will set you free, but at first it will piss you off.

Natalie Zett:

And now we have the other side of this. It's the clown, the invisible clown, and with social media, there are so many invisible clowns. These are the ones who sit up high in the bleachers. They're far removed from the sweat and tears of the arena. They don't know what it takes to put a creative work together, whether it's your music or something else, but these are the types of people who are quick to mock, ridicule and dismiss, and they will never put themselves out there. And I repeat that because this is what I've seen. And these types of clowns, they are not the funny clowns, they are the scary clowns Think of Pennywise. Okay, so their primary aim isn't to help you grow but to elevate themselves by pulling you down.

Natalie Zett:

And I've said it before and I'm saying it now and, based on the feedback I'm getting, I probably need to stick this into every other podcast that I'm doing, because it's important to keep reminding you that you can do this and you need to pay attention to the people who are there on your path to help you and support you, and not pay attention to the clowns. I guess the takeaway from all of this is to try not to lump all of the feedback into one big bucket, because it's necessary that we all learn to hone and develop the ability to discern the difference among the various types of feedback that are coming our way. So, again, try not to let the clowns get to you, but if they do get to you and sometimes they do, think of them this way they do serve a strange purpose in your life in that if you use them, you can let them motivate you and move you forward. It can happen Whenever someone told me whether it was in grade school or, you know, going forward in life whenever someone told me that I couldn't do something, that I wasn't capable of doing something because of X, y and Z, I would turn around and do it, and I've always called that creative defiance. So I invite you to to be creatively defiant.

Natalie Zett:

Now, before I continue reading from chapter 5, living in the Past, I want to talk about the identity of the newest character in the book, and that would be Ellie DeAngelo. So many people have asked me if she's based on somebody, and particularly some of my friends and family have their theories of who she really is. This character, ellie DeAngelo, came to me kind of already formed, and she came to me when I decided to change this book from memoir to fiction, and I did that because I wanted a little more creative license and how I was constructing the book and also, since I wasn't around in 1915 or any point earlier, I really didn't have all the information about what happened during that time. So it felt disingenuous to try to say this is a memoir. The only thing I had were the stories from my other relatives and I had to go with those. So that's how this became a fictional book.

Natalie Zett:

So the book moves into the modern era modern meaning the late 1990s to the early 2000s with Zara and her best friend, who is Elly Deangelo. I knew just what she looked like. I knew her mannerisms and her way of being because she was based on at least two people who were in my life, who were my friends and mentors. And what was particularly beautiful about these specific people I'm thinking of is they might have started off as my mentor, but then, as the friendship deepened, the roles would often reverse. So, it was a lot of dynamic back and forth and to me that is one of the healthiest things, because there was never a power imbalance as there can be in these types of mentor relationships. But Ellie the character, the voice, everything that I've put into this character is primarily based on a former coworker of mine.

Natalie Zett:

When I was in my early 20s I worked in this retail company in Cleveland in the back office, and there was a woman there whose name was Lucky DeAngelo May she rest in peace and she was my mother's age and she was kind of fierce. She was loud and although she grew up in Cleveland, I should say, her family immigrated from Sicily. Ellie somehow developed this New York City way of talking and expressing herself and even her conversational voice was kind of like a yell and she scared the crap out of everybody, including me. At that point I was a workers compensation claims examiner and Lucky was injured and I was the one who was designated or rather Valen told to help her because everybody else was afraid of her. And my boss said do everything in your power to keep her happy.

Natalie Zett:

And I thought, oh boy, scuttlebutt around the office pertained to Lucky's family and the type of other work they were involved in. We were never able to substantiate those rumors and God knows, I never asked because I didn't want to know. But after Lucky and I got to know each other and she would invite me over to her house, she talked to me honestly and she'd say you know, people think my family is associated with you. Know those people and I want you to know I was never, ever, ever associated with you. Know those kind of people and for those who are not from the United States, I have a lot of listeners in different countries. What she was referring to was the Cleveland mob. They were very prominent and very influential, especially when she was growing up in Cleveland and, to an extent, when I was living there. That's what she was talking about, so that I took that as the truth and I never explored that further with her. So Lucky was one of the inspirations for creating Ellie DeAngelo.

Natalie Zett:

Lucky was the main person that I envisioned for the scaffolding of this character, if you want to call it that. So Ellie Deangelo is very Zaftig. She's got beautiful dark hair and always well-dressed and beautifully put together, immaculately put together, and she, like my friend Lucky, also claimed to be related to the singer Connie Francis. And another story about Lucky that's not in the book because it doesn't pertain to that is that she would always say I tell my husband you know, if Frank Sinatra ever comes to town, I'm going to leave you for sure. She was always threatening to leave Tony for Frank Sinatra. She never met Frank Sinatra, but that was, besides, the point. That was the kind of character she was, but she was incredibly wise and she ended up being a very good and close friend to me until her death.

Natalie Zett:

However, ellie is also based on another friend of mine, a woman that I worked with for over 25 years, and her first name was Joan. I met her during a job interview and she hired me, and then we were in this company that she and some other people founded, and this company was extremely successful for a long period of time until it wasn't and there's a big story behind why it failed and how we all lost everything this woman and I our friendship survived that devastation. Then I became a manager in another software company, and I hired her to do some work for me and then fast forward a few more years. We finally ended up in the most bizarre company that I profiled, in Flower in the River. We had this really interesting dynamic relationship, and one thing that she and I shared was this ongoing commitment to learning. We were both really curious. We loved technology. That was the other thing we bonded over. We loved talking about software and writing and all kinds of things, and it was really great to have a relationship with a person that I worked with for all those years, because a lot of times it's difficult to sustain a work relationship Outside of work for a lot of reasons boundaries and everything else and so this was really special and the fact that you spend so much time with people at work. It's even more meaningful when you get along with that person and you can really count on them and they can count on you to be there for you through everything.

Natalie Zett:

But sadly, Joan too passed away. She had some existing health problems and she was actually fairly young when she died. And I thought a lot about Joan particularly, not just as I was writing the chapters about the work life of Zara and Ellie, but it really touched me when I was doing the audiobook, narrating and talking about what happened, and it was very much based on the experiences we had, and I so wished that she was around so she could hear that, and I know that she would just start laughing and just say well, that experience wasn't entirely useless. It served as material for you and the wonderful thing about this is that Joan was alive and we were in each other's lives as I was putting together this series of writing that would become this book, so she was there in the beginning. I often share sections of the book with her and she would give me her feedback in her two cents and since she too was a novelist, she'd share her work with me. So it was really a lot of back and forth in the creative zone that we lived and unfortunately, by the time my book was published she had already passed away and sadly I don't think that her novel was ever published. This also is one of the aspects that I incorporated into Elly Deanglo.

Natalie Zett:

Joan was one of those people who was always reading new age books. She was very much a seeker, a profound and sincere spiritual seeker, and that's the way I look at her, or I should say that's the way I remember her. But we would tease each other, and sometimes I would give her a hard time, about all those books on her bookshelf. It wasn't the new age books, it was the self-help books. And I would say my God, your whole bookshelf is filled with this stuff, what are you going to do with all that? And we would just laugh. She knew I didn't mean any harm by it, but we would just tease each other about our foibles and eccentricities, of which there was no shortage Now, because I didn't grow up in Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and we got to know each other as adults.

Natalie Zett:

We didn't really know a ton about our families and our back stories. So here's the thing when I began sharing with Joan some of the stories about my dad's family and those people were so steeped in the folk magic traditions of Eastern Europe Joan was in awe and she said, oh my God, you didn't tell me that you grew up with people who were reading tarot cards and doing séances and reading tea leaves and coffee grounds et cetera. And I said, well, it was just my family and I didn't think of them as anything extraordinary. But watching the reaction on her face, well, she just lit up when she found out this information about my past. And then, thinking about her reaction, I thought, who knows, maybe my family is kind of special, I don't know. I just thought of them as a bunch of eccentrics and kind of ditzy, but I never thought of them as anything other than that's my family. But she had a different take on them and of course we argued and fought and we disagreed. That was part of our relationship too.

Natalie Zett:

It was an agreement that we could disagree and the nice thing is that Joan and I could get into a huff and we could really get into our huffs sometimes, but we would come back together, I think, because the trust was there and we would talk about the things that were disturbing to us and at the end, at the day's end or at the end of it all, we found that we could actually learn from one another, along with pushing one another and hitting each other's buttons occasionally, but that was how the growth took place, and often our disagreements were about the people we hired in that first company. I would say things to her like why are you hiring this person? This person has such bad vibes. And then when we had to end up firing the person that she hired, she would talk to me and she would say how were you able to see that? How were you able to predict what would happen? And I would honestly say I don't know. But I think she was the first person who asked me how I came to the decisions that I came to, and then I started examining my own intuitive abilities, and it gave me a little more insight into why I was doing things too, as opposed to just having a knee-jerk reaction to things. It was quite a dynamic relationship, and I have to say that I am so sorry that both of these dear people have passed away, but in a sense, huge pieces of their spirits live on in the character of Ellie D'Angelo, and maybe that's why I love Ellie so much. So that is who Ellie D'Angelo is. She is actually not based on any one person. She's based on these two people mostly. And then there are a few touches of this, that and the other and voila, a new person is born. That's her story, continuing with Chapter 5 Living in the Past.

Natalie Zett:

Just as Zara was in the midst of her Eastland disaster research, another Titanic movie was released she could not escape my heart will go on which seemed to play whenever she turned on the radio. She was disgusted. The Titanic has yet another celluloid tribute and only a handful of people knew of the Eastland. Their deaths were of no consequence to anyone Save their family and employers, wrote George Hilton. Zara finally found Hilton's definitive book about the Eastland, a tome weighed down by facts, figures and dry narrative. It was a good reference but provided no comfort or insight, and the Titanic stuck in her craw.

Natalie Zett:

The Eastland was also an epic scandal. A ship of immigrants and immigrants' children capsizing in a harbor in downtown Chicago didn't rate as highly as a large luxury liner filled with big names careening into an iceberg. How does a city, much less a country, forget 844 lives snuffed out in a day Very selective, who gets remembered and what gets forgotten. But sometimes what's forgotten has the most power. Whatever the reason for this curious collective, amnesia Zara wanted it in people's consciousness. With all the bizarre debacles and tragedies under its historical belt. Chicago should have awarded the Eastland a perverted claim to fame. And that's the end of the passage, and that is the end of chapter 5.

Natalie Zett:

And very soon I will post another interview with someone who has also a very deep connection to the Eastland. However, her story is quite different from my family's story. So stay tuned, and I'll have that announcement for you as soon as everything is ready. In the meantime, I hope you'll continue exploring, experimenting and creating, because everyone is a creative. So take care of yourself and have a good week, and I'll talk to you soon.

Head Shot

Natalie Zett

Host